So I am having a kid friendly wedding and I decided that I should have something to keep the kids relatively busy – even if it is only for a 15-20 minute timeframe.

I scoured a few local stores to find decently priced items that would be safe, fun and not require parents assistance.

Each girl will get a mermaid (with brush), two horses, a Princess/ or Minnie Mouse Activity set (crayons, stickers, coloring book for $1 ea!!!), a sucker, a smarties candy, and four pipe cleaners.

The candy and the pipe cleaners I bought in bulk and I was able to get the mermaid and horsey sets in groups of four – ten pieces (respectively).

The girl’s sets were actually pretty hard because of what is out there for girls’ acivity toys. Most of it was jewelry, nail polish/chapstick, etc – things that wouldn’t keep them ‘busy’ for very long or could potentially get very messy.

The pipe cleaners might seem pretty random but when I am touring the dollar and craft stores looking for things that kids won’t a) ruin their outfits with (aka markers/makeup) b) require mom’s full attention (beads/models) c) choke or otherwise harm themselves with – this is what I found. I have never seen a toddler or a four year old complain about pipecleaners – plus there’s like a million things you can do with them. Strange yes – but also a win as far as I’m concerned.

In the boy’s set I have a Monster’s Inc activity set, two army men, two hot wheels cars, a sucker, a smarties candy, and four pipe cleaners. PS finding stuff for the boys’ sets was *way* easier.

So I basically put all the items into a plain, brown paper lunch sack and bent it over twice (to the backside).

After this it was time for the fun part – I took a plain paper doilie and folded it in half and placed it on top of the bag and punched two, evenly spaced holes with a hand held hole puncher (now I am reevaluating the pics I took – because I didn’t show you all my ‘tools’). I made the set of holes about one inch down from the top of the folded edge of the bag and about an inch apart.

Once the holes were punched I threaded through a ribbon so now it looks like this:

The come the final step – Tie the ribbon! I used a lavender for the girl’s sets and a aqua color for the boys. I was originally going to use babker’s twine but it wouldn’t tie right so I went traveling my house for ribbon – this is what I had on hand…

All finished I had 22 activity sets – 12 for the girls and 10 for the boys. I deliberately had more for the girls because I have four flower girls that I am sure will each have one of these – that means there are only 8 left for all the other girls that could potentially show up. I haven’t had too many kids on the rsvp’s yet but the deadline is this week so we will see if this is enough.

@suburbian: I luv it! I’m so happy to finally hear of a child friendly wedding the bags r cute depending on ur theme maybe a little sparkle to capture the children’s eye (Nt a necessity though as they r cute as is)

I LOVE them! We had a child-friendly wedding as well, but I ended up having a children’s tent with activities and babysitters, so I only had to occupy them in a seat for the ceremony (the kids were free to go back and forth from the main area, but I think most stayed outside. Parents raved about it). But these are adorable!

love them! I’m going to be doing something similar for the kiddies at my wedding (we’re also considering bringing a tv and hooking it up in a corner for movies…) There’s a space just off the dance floor area that we are planning to designate as kid central!